Page 118 of Made in Mumbai

Maya gave him a look. He just ran a hand down her arm and climbed back up the stage, shaking hands that were waiting for him. And that bawling baby in her arms? She was smiling and chatting up with heads of the country’s biggest stock market control board, taking compliments like a queen and preening in her father’s arms.

Maya glanced up at the ticker, and the GK Enterprises stock was running, opened at 17% over projected price. She clapped with the rest of them, and saw in slow motion the opened stock climb another 5% in the next minute. The applause turned louder, fiercer. That is when Gautam gave the audience his attention and noticed the ticker above him. He pointed it to Megha and as if she understood what that meant, their daughter began to clap too.

It was a big day for Gautam. A huge day. Now that he had done this, she was going to tell him he would be a father again. Maya grinned.

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“See?” Gautam held her in his arms and pointed down at the cot. “You have two little sisters, MM.”

“Wow,” her wide eyes turned wondrous. Megha pushed her body down to go into the cot but Gautam held her back — “It’s for small babies. No.”

“Please, Daddy, please!”

Gautam looked conflicted, eyeing the cot as if searching for space.

“No.” Maya warned him from her perch on the hospital bed. “No chance.”

He glanced at his eldest, then shrugged. “You have your big girl bed,” he whispered in her ear. “Why do you need these tiny cots now, huh?”

Megha seemed to mull it over as Gautam sat her down on the bed beside her and reached into the cot for one of their girls. Twins. Non-identical twins.

“You want to hold her?” He asked.

“Gautam, no,” Maya warned again.

“This is ok. You are sitting behind her, I’ll be in front of her.”

Megha perked up, clapping her hands and crossing her legs.

“It’s ok,” Gautam eyed her. “I’ve got them.”

Maya smiled, keeping her body curved behind Megha as Gautam placed the baby on her lap.

“Ooooo! She’s real.”

They laughed. “Yes, she is,” Gautam braced his hands on either side of her on the bed. “And there’s one more where she came from.”

“I want! I want!”

“One by one, MM,” Maya kissed her head.

“I wuv you sooo much!” She sang to her baby sister. Then immediately — “But let me check the second one.”

Gautam took the baby from her lap, and swapped her for the other twin.

“Aww! I wuv you too!” Their eldest cooed. “Can we keep them both, Daddy? Please?”

Maya let out a chortle.

Gautam shrugged — “Since you insist now… Ok. But you can’t fight with them.”

She held both her thumps up.

“And you can’t make them fight either,” Maya added, knowing her eldest well.

“Yes, mom!” She flicked her ponytail back. Gautam laughed, reaching down to press his mouth to her head, then slowly taking their third daughter from her lap. As Megha grabbed the rails of the cot and talked a mile a minute with Gautam about care instructions of the two babies, Maya sat back on the pillows and thought that so much of her she never knew was broken had healed.

Gautam was patiently answering Megha’s questions, his eyes meeting hers over her little head. He smiled, his mouth still moving. Her husband, the father of her three daughters, the boy she had met on a rainy Mumbai morning. He had healed something he never broke.

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